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Text description provided by the architects. This project is the refurbishment and extension at ground floor level of a Grade II listed cottage within a conservation area in Bury St Edmunds. The extension is resolutely contemporary, using a simple palette of oak, brick and frameless glazing in an elegant pitched roof arrangement which is sympathetic to the original house. The Bury Society commented that the project “shows how a well-designed contemporary extension can complement an existing older building”.

The ground floor of the house was extensively re-planned, with the rooms at the front of the house lightly refurbished. To the rear of the plan a new 8-metre long pitched roof single storey extension creates an open plan kitchen/diner with direct access and views onto the garden. The room is flooded with natural light by 4 roof lights and incorporates an oak floor, which gives visual clarity to accentuate the form of the extension. The shift in levels between the interior floor level and the garden has been harnessed to create an unusual and intimate relationship with the garden.

A trapezoidal door made of kiln dried tongue and groove English oak leads to a shallow flight of three brick steps up to garden level. The seat-height cill of the large, frameless, corner-glazed window is level with the ground outside, creating a seamless visual continuity between inside and out. As with the main living space, which employs a limited palette of materials (natural slate, lots of lead, english oak, lime render, soft red bricks), the kitchen and bathrooms demonstrate how a high quality finish can be achieved with a limited budget through the careful assembly of low cost utilitarian materials (white tiles, cork floor, and white formica faced ply).